After 100 Years in Business, You Might Think You Know the Iconic Swedish Design Store Svenskt Tenn. You’d Be Wrong.

Something funny happens when you’re a company that’s been around for a full century. People start to assume that they already know everything there is to know about you — that they’ve somehow osmotically absorbed your brand tenets or your ethos by virtue of you simply sticking around. For me, the storied Swedish design brand Svenskt Tenn, which is celebrating its 100th birthday this year, was one of those companies. I had been to Stockholm a handful of times; I’d wandered the Svenskt Tenn flagship’s warren of rooms, spread out over four interconnected storefronts along the city’s idyllic harbor; I’d even gone down the rabbit hole of Josef Frank’s particularly psychedelic botanical textiles for the brand, wondering if I should reupholster my dining chairs; I could almost spell Svenskt without thinking about it. But then I went to Stockholm in September on the occasion of Svenskt Tenn’s centenary retrospective opening at Liljevalchs Kunsthalle, running through January 12. Called Svenskt Tenn: A Philosophy of Home, it spans thirteen thematic rooms, curated by Jane Withers together with Svenskt Tenn’s head curator Karin Södergren. It was there I realized that what I knew about this company hardly scratched the surface.

For instance — and perhaps most glaringly obvious — I never realized that Svenskt Tenn translates literally to “Swedish tin,” and the brand’s history with pewter, a malleable alloy made from tin, is one of its richest narrative veins. Svenskt Tenn was founded in 1924 by Estrid Ericson, a former art teacher who started the company as a way to create and sell contemporary pieces of pewter — a material made fashionable again during the Arts & Crafts movement of the 19th century — at affordable prices. Pewter was so at the heart of Svenskt Tenn’s business that Ericson painted her store green as a way to set off pewter’s muted gray tones. At the exhibition’s “pewter room” — and at a concurrent selling exhibition across town at Jackson Design, curated by Halleroed and running through January 18, where the second half of these photos are from — you get a sense of the vast creativity that pewter has inspired throughout Svenskt Tenn’s tenure. There are functionalist vases, pots carved with classical motifs, hand-engraved nesting tables, intricate aquatic-themed schnapps vessels, Art Deco ashtrays, apple-shaped boxes topped with semi-precious stones, hand mirrors adorned with drooping, sad-clown features, and even a hulking, gorgeous room divider and dining table made from slabs of pewter inlaid with brass.

But the most interesting heretofore-unknown-to me facet of Svenskt Tenn’s history is something I mentioned in passing but is in truth the very reason Svenskt Tenn has endured for so long. Though Americans, including myself, have come to associate Svenskt Tenn primarily with Josef Frank — the Austrian designer and architect who fled his native country in the 1930s due to growing anti-Semitism and who contributed hundreds of iconic designs to Svenskt Tenn during their 35-year collaboration — the brand’s heart was its founder, Estrid Ericson, who started the company at the age of 30, only three years after women in Sweden got the right to vote. A Philosophy of Home’s third room focuses solely on the personal and professional life of Ericson; it showcases her archive of personal possessions that she often collected on her travels and is peppered throughout with quotes about her philosophy on how to live. Learning about Ericson — and her long and fruitful collaboration with Frank — crystallized for me exactly why I find Svenskt Tenn so appealing, and is likely an underlying reason why you might, too. Her ability to put together an interior or scenography or product assortment with so much vitality, integrity, and, well, fun, is almost unparalleled. Not only that, but so much of the language used to describe Ericson’s approach to interiors and domesticity mirrors the framework we laid out so extensively in our own book, How to Live With Objects.

In 1939, Ericson penned a manifesto called “The Catechism of Interior Design,” where she wrote: “We must not forget to cherish freedom within our homes, to not abstain from pieces just because they could jeopardize our aesthetic formalism. It is never a fabricated color chart that gives a home its personality, but it is all the things one collects through life. All the things we once loved, alongside all the things we love today. Our homes are never completed; during our entire lives, we continue to build upon them.” Ericson and Frank had a generous vision for the home, where vintage pieces and modern as well as precious collectibles and cheap trinkets could live in harmony, and different aesthetics and patterns could co-exist if chosen according to your tastes. (Sound familiar?) In the exhibition’s fifth room, a selection of Ericson and Frank’s most notable interiors are showcased, including replicas of their respective Stockholm living rooms, which famously doubled as real-life showrooms for Svenskt Tenn.

Svenskt Tenn: A Philosophy of Home does a lovely and nuanced job of explaining Svenskt Tenn’s continued contribution to the world; there are also table settings that display Ericson’s knack for scene-setting and decor, cross-sections of sofas that put the company’s craftsmanship front and center; yards and yards of whimsical textiles; and instances of the company’s strides into the future, with contemporary collaborations with designers like Carina Seth Andersson and India Mahdavi. But even this sprawling exhibition doesn’t tell the whole story — a tidbit I learned while touring the store is that Josef Frank never proposed rugs depicting animals or any other kind of living thing because he didn’t want to step on them! — which is why a store like Svenskt Tenn rewards multiple visits. After all, the “philosophy” at its core is one that centers around relationships — between Estrid Ericson and Josef Frank, between a homeowner and anyone who might step into their space, between the customer and the brand, and between us and the face we show to the world. It’s a deeply human approach and one that’s ever-evolving, but at least this exhibition is a perfect snapshot of a particular moment in what is sure to be the company’s even longer legacy.